"What's Your Ghost Story?"

Over time, my personal scare-o-meter has re-set to a higher threshhold. When you spend a lot of time checking out places that are reported to be haunted, it’s an occupational hazard. I’m not quite laissez faire, but I do approach most potential Haunt Spots with a sense of “okay, where’s my checklist and what’s this all about?” and dive right in.

Although we’re not in the business of gathering evidence, we record when we have a personal experience — sometimes on the back of our checklist or in the margins. Sometimes, it’s a jumble of hurried impressions. We try to be thorough and conscientious.

Recently, I was tooling around a cemetery. You know, like you do. We already knew it was going to be a stop in an upcoming ghost tour, but were poking around trying to locate a specific monument. The researcher I was with is one of those people who has a special relationship with her camera. If there’s a paranormal image to capture, she’s much more likely to get it than anyone I know. So, what the heck? I’ll click on her digital voice recorder for a bit so she doesn’t have to juggle them both.

It was an interesting (read unsettling) visit. I’ve been in a lot of cemeteries and this one didn’t initially seem any more atmospheric than any other. It’s got some great headstones. There are mystery stories lurking beneath your feet. You know, a cemetery. I’d been there before, but this time something felt different. Not right away. It took a while. Like something was gathering critical mass before we could feel it inching up our necks.

We spent a goose-bumpy afternoon there, joshing our way around the dead people. Whistling a happy tune to keep from hightailing it back to the car in an embarrassing fashion. Each of us glad not to be there alone.

Done – check. Get out of there. Drive home and off she goes to her house and I’m safely ensconced in my office. Oops! I forgot to give back her digital voice recorder. Well, heck. I’ll just turn it on and let it play while I check email.

What was that?

WHAT WAS THAT?

So, I’m scrambling on the internet looking for an on-line manual for the Sony ICD-B600 recorder. How do I rewind? How do I fast forward? How do I find what I heard again? How do I find ALL the things I’ve heard again?

It was a miracle I didn’t accidentally erase the whole thing, my hands were shaking so badly. I’d never captured EVP’s like this before. Heck! I’d never captured ANY EVP’s before! Another research partner of mine had, but not me. And this was the mother lode. Steve and Tango and Jay and Grant would have been salivating.

Okay, here goes…

We’d been among the graves a little while and had started to confess that we were each feeling uneasy. The atmosphere had changed. I asked the question, “Is this your area? Do you want us to leave?”

“Yes.”

Only imagine a hissy, sigh of a yesssss. You can also imagine, only it wouldn’t be your imagination, me peeing my pants when I heard that for the first time on the recorder.

OKAY! Forget the “Yes”! Did that whatever it is just say Get Out? (on-line manual… rewind…) Oh yeah! That’s what I heard. Well. Well, well, well.

What can I say to that? First, I can try to slow my breathing, but then what? I don’t want to go back to that cemetery. It told us to Get Out. The only correct answer is “Yes, Sir”. And then you get out. Like when the stupid family in the movie is told by the entity that’s trying to kill them to Get Out. The answer should be “Yes, Sir” and you leave. Period. Of course, the family didn’t leave and look what happened to them.

But, wait, there’s more…

We had to go back. We needed to film. At night. And, I haven’t even told you about the other freaky EVP’s.